Dive by Stacey Donovan

Mr. Sanders, my English teacher, as he tells us this. He’s sitting on top of his desk. His face, which looks like it was just poured from a blender, all puffy and soft, gets in the way of those words. How is someone supposed to convey anything with a pancake-batter face like that? I glance around the room. Nobody moves. Not even the Romantics.
     
    Why are they so still? Oh, I see. It’s his choice of words: romantic attachment. Is love a vacuum? A collision repair shop? Is anybody else thinking what I’m thinking? Or maybe another kind of attachment is on their minds, so heavy on the brain, they’re cemented to that word, the beguiling one with three letters, the s-e-x one, and neither their minds nor their bodies can forget it. So nobody moves.
     
    If love is a vacuum, does it suck? Oh, stop now! I can’t see what people are thinking; I can barely hear what the uncooked face of Sanders is saying. It’s impossible for me to concentrate today. Big surprise. But, like maybe a bird that falls from the nest and can’t fly yet from the ground to the sky, I’m stopped on that word: passion. And it stays with me all day.

So Pale
     
    “ Where’s Baby Teeth?”
    My mother is alone in the car, parked in the school parking lot. Waiting, the thought shudders within, for me.
    “Over at that Quinn girl’s house. Get in.” Both her hands still hold the steering wheel, though the car engine is off. There are shadows beneath her eyes.
    I’m standing in the air of the open passenger door, one foot on the curb. I don’t want to get in. “Why?” I say.
    “The tests all came back negative.” Something is dragging beneath her words. “Will you get in the car.”
    “Which tests?” I glance around the parking lot—any green VWs? I want to see my dad, so I get in. The air is slack.
     
    “The doctor said he’s badly anemic and needs a blood transfusion.” The keys clink as her hand switches the car’s ignition. “I don’t want your sister to see him because he looks really terrible today. I was there all morning, cleaning him up.”
    Cleaning him up?
     
    We roll soundlessly out of the parking lot. My mother’s driving slowly, which is not unusual. I’ve always thought that she was simply cautious, but I see that she’s afraid. It’s her hands. They’re so pale. Maybe she thinks somebody will run her over.
    “Well, what does it mean?” I say and watch her hands gripping the steering wheel. Have they always been so pale? I wonder what she’s so afraid of. Baby Teeth said my mother didn’t sleep in her bed last night. Did she sleep at all?
     
    I glance away, out the window. All I see are vacant green lawns. The day is bright, but as I look at the sunny sky, it hurts my eyes, as if it doesn’t belong where it is. How can the sky be out of place? How can he be so suddenly sick? I see my father in one of his slick business suits, striding across the lawn with his locked briefcase. He’s big. He’s powerful. He’s not sick. How sick is he? “So why is he getting a blood transfusion? Is there something wrong with his blood?”
     
    “Because it’s supposed to help. Dr. Sweeney’s going to do some other tests, and they’ve already taken more blood. He’s so exhausted he can’t even eat. Supposedly, his blood is not acting right.” I look at my mother as her lips press sharply closed.
    “So the transfusion will give him energy?” The air rolls across my hands as if filled with tiny needles. I look down, see my hands unmoving in my lap, feel they might belong to someone else.
     
    “If it doesn’t, they’ll put him on intravenous tomorrow; otherwise, he’ll get dehydrated.”
    Dehydrated? Not “acting” right? My hands sting. It’s me getting afraid. I don’t want to look, don’t want to know how pale my hands are. “So when somebody gets a transfusion, they feel better immediately? What about complications? What about AIDS?”
     
    “Oh, Virginia, I don’t know. It should work; it’s